Valentine Infantry Tank 1938–45

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The Valentine was Britain's most produced and most widely used tank of the Second World War. Having the strange distinction of falling somewhere between an infantry tank and a cruiser tank, the Valentine first saw combat during Operation Compass in November 1941 and remained one of the main medium-size tanks in British service into 1943. As the Churchill tank became more prevalent, the Valentine was relegated to specialist variants like amphibious and bridge-layer tanks, which would remain in service in the Far East up until the end of the war. This book describes the evolution of the Valentine design and weighs up its impact on the battlefield. Widely regarded today as one of the weaker tanks to be fielded during the war, it was exceptionally numerous--more Valentines were produced than any other British tank and accounted for 25 percent of the tanks produced in Britain during the war.

Bruce Newsome, Ph.D., is a lecturer in international relations at the University of California, Berkeley. He consulted governments on defense acquisitions while at the RAND Corporation in California and the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. His publications include: Making Tanks: How Britain Required, Designed, and Produced the Best and Worst of Tanks, 1918-1945; Homeland Security and Emergency Management; Security and Risk Management; and Made, Not Born: Why Some Soldiers are Better than Others.